Is there anyone we can pick from the Championship?

Most discussions between Newcastle at the moment, appear to be concerning the £35 million.

It seems as if a great number of fans would actually have been happier about our three first signings, had they come at a greater cost. Personally I find this totally ridiculous, as I think one should never turn away a player if a real bargain presents itself - especially in today's financial climate.

Those are also same fans, that want us to spend big, and preferably buy proven Premier League players, instead of doing our shopping abroad and, God forbid, having a look at lower league players.

As much as I would like us to have a strong core of English talent in our team, I certainly wouldn't want us to be spending "silly" money on young prospects just because they're English. Let's face it, the amounts that English players go for these days hardly reflect the actual quality they have when compared to players from abroad. A hypothetical example - with £20m at your disposal, would you spend it all on Jordan Henderson, or would you rather bring in a player like Rafael Van der Vaart for £8m (as Spurs did last summer) and a couple of others?

If we want to get some more English players to our club, they would have to be either youth players or plying their trade in the Championship or lower.

It could be very interesting to assemble a list of the most talented players in the Championship aged 25 or younger. Swansea snapped up the top-scorer, Danny Graham, for £3 million, so if we were interested in, let's say, Max Gradel or Lewis McGugan they should definitely be affordable, and maybe they could add more than just depth and actually turn out to be real gems. Joleon Lescott, Kyle Walker, Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott (the list is endless) also made the step up, didn't they?

I would be in favour of going through the Championship - what do you think?

Thank to Funkness for submitting this for all to have a ponder about. It seems quite relevant given our alleged interest in Shane Long plus our confirmed interest in Neil Taylor who made his name in the Championship.